Wednesday, February 06, 2008

fun t-shirt

if you were in the market for some politcal attire, i would probably get this. its not wrong thanks MS for the recommendation.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

i dont know about that...

have you seen the commercial for that new car (i think ford) where there are 2 guys going on a road trip? just as they start the trip, they pass a sign that shows LA is about 450 miles away. the driver offers a deal to his friend- he will pay for the gas and the friend will pay for the food. then they show the guys stopping to eat 4 times. i think three stops look like gas station type snack purchases, and one looks like a sandwich. at the end of the commercial they advertise the car gets 35 MPG. after i saw that i did some thinking...

450 miles at 35 MPG is about 13 gallons of gas. the average gas price in CA is probably above $3. Thats at least $39 worth of gas (probably more because i assume they bought more than was required since they couldnt have known exactly how much gas they'd need) that the driver had to purchase. the supposed funny part of the commercial is that the food buyer got the bad end of the deal. i am not sure that is true. not to mention it is fair to assume they are only buying food they are consuming during the trip. no reasonable person would agree to a deal where the driver (gas purchaser) can buy whatever and ave it for the future. and i assume the 35 MPG is based on highway speeds, so its reasonable to assume it was an 8 hour trip. i think it would be fairly challenging for an average person to eat $40 worth of gas station snacks in that time period as depicted.

i understand that in this case the driver may have gotten the better deal, but i dont think it was by much. and with 2 average adults under reasonable conditions (who stops every 2 hours on an 8 hour road trip? who eats that much junk/candy/snacks without getting sick?) it is more likely that the snack buyer gets the better end of the deal. the only reason it worked out for the gas buyer in this case is because of the excessive stopping and snacking. basically what they are saying is if you are a person who eats a lot of excessive gas station snacks, then you should offer to pay for gas and let your (supposed) sucker friend pay for food. DUH!